Over the years, various applications have been developed to assist visually-impaired users to use hand-held devices. One such application, iPhone OS's VoiceOver accessibility feature, allows interaction with objects on screen and hear description of the objects. The VoiceOver accessibility feature provides audio descriptions of items on the screen, including status information such as battery level, Wi-Fi and cellular network signal levels, the cellular network provider, time of day as well as make calls. Although the maps support the VoiceOver accessibility feature, the screen reader only provides description when the map has moved or the current zoom level on the map upon zoom. However, this information does not assist, for example, a blind person to search, explore or access other functionalities of the map. Thus, a vast potential of map functionalities remain unutilized by the visually-impaired users.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for a method and system for providing map interactivity for a visually-impaired user and to overcome the abovementioned shortcoming in the disclosed field.